


RosaWatts Week 2k19

by ArizaLuca



Category: To The Moon (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, also angst, rosawatts, rosawatts week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-06 20:38:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19070248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArizaLuca/pseuds/ArizaLuca
Summary: Seven short stories of Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts.





	1. Roses

Eva Rosalene wasn't exactly fond of her last name.

Sure, it was a pretty one, but she couldn't have told you exactly  _how_  many times people asked her for her last name, she replied "Rosalene", and then they replied, "Alright, Rosalene, may I have your  _last_  name please?"

She sometimes thought their reaction when she replied that this  _was_  her last name was funny, though.

She was in her office doing writing up the report of their last job- the client had wanted simply to speak to her husband again before she died and express how she cared about them, and it had gone surprisingly well, finishing the job with plenty of time to spare- when Neil poked his head into the office, giving a very mischievous smile.

The smile Neil was giving her, to be quite honest, was one that somewhat put her out, especially knowing his personality and everything about him.

"Hey, Eva."

"Hi, Neil. Did you finish your report?" she asked, barely glancing up from her computer screen before lowering her eyes and tapping out a few words on the keyboard sharply, knowing the answer before she even finished asking the question.

"Nope." He leaned on the doorframe slightly, adjusting the rims of his glasses. They were so reflective she couldn't see the green tint of his eyes.

Shame. They were a nice shade of green.

She sighed, lifting dark brown eyes to give him a deadpan stare. "It's due at the end of the week. You'd better get on it if you don't want Rob to get on your case about it."

Neil's mischievous smile didn't even quirk slightly at the mention of Rob, which made her even more apprehensive. What prank was he going to pull on her this time? The last time he'd pulled a prank on her, he'd made her hair turn bright green for a week.

She still had no idea how he even did it. Most hair dyes didn't even work on her black hair with how dark it was, unless she bleached it and she wasn't about to try that.

"Yeah, I'll get on it."

She finally stopped looking at her computer to frown at him sightly. "Neil, what are you-?"

"Happy Valentine's Day, Eva!" Before she could finish, he was holding up a bouquet of blue, yellow, and red roses, the stems somewhat roughly cut and tied together with some sort of colored string.

"Valentine's Day was two weeks ago," was her automatic response even as she took the bouquet of roses from him and regarded it.

There were at least six colorful in the bouquet, two of each color, but still arranged in such a way that it didn't look childish or weird. They were beautiful roses, fully blossomed and practically glowing in the fluorescent lights of Eva's office.

There were two sort of hair-ties keeping the roses together. One was a green one with little cucumber clips dangling from it, clicking whenever Eva even shifted halfway to her left, and the other was a little pink one with a smiling jellyfish on it.

Neil was grinning. "I got some weird looks for asking if they had cucumber and jellyfish hair-ties at the store," he said, almost in a bragging way. "I, of course, told them it was for my beautiful head of hair and that I wished to use it to adorn my head."

Eva was still looking at the roses. Blue and yellow. Two of her favorite colors.

But there was something niggling the back of her head, waiting patiently for Eva to gather the thought and pluck it up.

Neil liked to give secret messages, whether it was something scrawled in a notebook and written in lemon juice to be seen any other time, or a code, or some sort of backward thing on a paper that everyone could read if they so much as turned the paper over. She knew he did. He just liked to be secretive and pretend no one understood.

So it wasn't just because she liked those colors. It couldn't be.

Plus, there were the red roses; if they were just for her favorite colors, he would've just given blue and yellow.

( _Or maybe she was just putting too much thought into this, but he liked his secret messages._ )

Yellow meant friendship.

Red meant love.

What did blue roses mean?

She must've been frowning, because Neil's big, beaming grin faded slightly. "Uh... I just found the nicest roses I could... maybe I should've brought you a basket of vegetables, instead..."

The remark snapped her out of her thoughtful stupor, and she rolled her eyes at him. "Cucumbers, Neil, don't worry. I think they're very pretty."

He puffed up slightly. "Of course! I, Neil Watts, would only pick the loveliest of roses for my colleague, Dr.  _Rose_ -alene!"

All thoughts of secret messages slipped her mind as she rolled her eyes at the pun and set the bouquet on her desk carefully. No wonder he bought her roses, then. "Alright, Dr. Watts, get on your report then, before your colleague has to do all the work herself."

Neil gave her a teasing pout, lips curling up at the ends in a way that she'd memorized from years of friendship. "Aw. No thank you for the flowers?"

She sighed and gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Yes, yes. Thank you for the flowers, Neil. They're lovely."

"Of course, my beautiful colleague!"

"Stop being all complimentary to get out of writing your report, Neil..."

* * *

Neil was asleep.

He'd slipped into sleep a few times recently, the heart monitor a consistent, quiet undertone that he'd complained drove him up the wall but had been the one thing to lull him into sleep as well. His glasses were off ( _of course_ ), and instead of wearing his lab coat, like always, he was just wearing the scrubs the nurses had given him.

He was slightly disappointed to hear that Eva wasn't in the room.

It was easy to tell when she was in the room- she'd be quietly moving around, making sure he was comfortable, or her arm would be resting on the edge of the bed, or he'd simply be able to hear her breathe.

He was glad he'd been able to give the flowers to her before he wound up here.

It was perhaps the last gift he'd be able to get her.

(He probably should've given her the other hair ties, too, but he wasn't sure where they'd ended up, and he didn't know if she'd particularly want a strawberry hair tie.)

He grumbled, eking green eyes open. The fluorescent lights of the hospital blinded him momentarily, almost taking him back to the one time he'd conked out on his desk and had been shaken awake by Eva, the light above his head making him squint into her dark brown eyes.

Like his coffee, with no cream or sugar added to it.

He loved his coffee.

( _He loved Eva._ )

He shook the thought off to squint around his room, a blurry smear in front of his eyes. As he'd thought, there was currently nobody in the room.

But there was a new thing on his bedside table.

He scrabbled about, finding one arm of his glasses and awkwardly pulling it onto his face so that he could blink the sleep out of his eyes, staring at the spot on his bedside table.

When the sleep managed to leave his eyes, he realized he was looking at a rose.

It wasn't the one he'd given Eva; it was just beginning to bloom and was a deeper blue, the petals barely beginning to open, a message pinned to the stem with a small, plain clothespin.

He blinked at the rose again, then reached out slightly trembling fingers to pull it closer.

He'd known she might guess.

The second she'd started frowning, he realized how very code-y it seemed and how very much she knew about codes. How very, very scarily close she'd get if she realized the meaning of the roses in Victorian flower language because he thought that code was neat.

So he'd made the pun, and she'd forgotten all about it as she rolled her eyes at him and gently pushed him out of her office so she could finish her work.

But he couldn't bring himself to care as he peered at the message.

It was longer than a few lines- more like a short letter than anything else.

Blue roses.

Secret love.

He read the first line.

" _I figured it out, Neil._ "


	2. Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil Watts lies a lot. Eva Rosalene does not like that.

Eva Rosalene knew Neil Watts was lying.

It was easy to know, when she'd known Neil as long as she had. Even when he was clowning around and declaring himself to be 'Lorenzo von Matterhorn' to some poor befuddled customer or client he'd tilt his head at exactly the right angle so that reflective glasses would reflect the light and make it impossible to see his eyes and his nose would wrinkle slightly, as if annoyed that he had to lie in the first place.

So when she confronted him about the brand-new bottle of painkillers that he'd left on his desk while he went to the bathroom and she walked into the room to ask him about paperwork and spotted the bottle, almost gleaming in the light, and he 'confessed' that he'd run into another wall facefirst, it was easy to tell that he was fibbing.

"You didn't run into a wall."

It was hard to tell his reaction, with his reflective glasses reflecting the fluorescent light from the office lights as he stared at her and she stared back.

"You're not telling the truth, Neil." She stepped closer, arms crossed. He stepped back, as if that would have an effect. "You need to tell me why you're actually taking painkillers."

"I told you. I ran into another-"

"No you didn't. You think you can get away with lying to me? Cucumbers, Neil, I  _know_  you." She shook her head, refusing to remove her eyes from his face. "Your nose wrinkles."

He stared at her.

Thumbed his nose thoughtfully, as if he'd never realized this.

"... why does it matter so much to you, Eva?"

His voice was almost serious for once, not a jokey undertone or outright humored tone to his words. "It's not like it really has much to do with you, right? I mean, yeah, you're my best friend, but does it really matter if I'm taking painkillers for who-knows-what?"

Eva Rosalene thought about lying.

Lying that it was because he was her partner, so of  _course_  she cared about him, he was her best friend and had been since she was eight years old and sitting on the playground with jellyfish hair clips and talking about who-knew-what with him, and that was why she was worried and confronting him over why he was taking these pills.

But she was an honest person, if a little blunt and overly critical of her best friend sometimes, and it was only a second's thought before she told the truth.

"I love you."

His jaw slackened.

She couldn't see his eyes.

Maybe he thought she was lying.

But she was not.

Eva Rosalene did not lie.

"It's because I love you and you're an idiot and I want to make sure you're okay, Neil," she told him, continuing to be honest and blunt and Eva Rosalene, because she was not good at lying, not like Neil could be, she did not try to deflect with fibs and laughs and jokes and often would simply avoid the truth while still giving her honest opinion, but here she was not avoiding the truth and flat out saying it.

"I know you too well and I don't like the fact that you are lying to me, and I don't want you to lie to me Neil, not when I care about you this damn much and not when I love-"

He grabbed her by the face, fingers slipping into place like he'd done so a thousand times before to support the back of her head and his palms tilted her face upwards slightly because he was only the tiniest bit taller than she was and pulled her so that her feet stumbled over carpeted floor and then the two of them were kissing, coffee breath breathing into her lungs, and she'd never imagined her first kiss with Neil would be under fluorescent lights with the door nearly shut behind Neil and his desk at her back, but here they were.

Roxie had once described kissing to Eva like feeling fireworks go off, if they were with the right person and you cared about them enough. This was like feeling a rocket take off into the sky while the sun set, painting the sky purple and red and hues of pink and feeling a hand try to sneak into hers but pushing it away because they were working and she didn't know how to feel about that.

He pulled away from the kiss, hands tangled in her long black hair and green eyes, for once, so close that even with his reflective glasses, she could see green eyes that looked like a cucumber in the summer sun, thumbs cupping her cheeks slightly, staring into her dark brown eyes and looking at her.

He looked at her for a while.

Then a little breath that smelled of coffee and warmth puffed out of his mouth in a sigh, and with the sigh came quiet, quiet words that she could barely hear over the humming of fluorescent lighting.

"I'm dying, Eva."

Her first instinct was to scoff and shake her head and tell him to quit joking around and tell her what was actually wrong, but she stopped her first instinct because his nose had not twitched, his green eyes had not left hers and there was no way he was hiding anything and his face was serious, for once, not a joking grinning mask.

He was not lying.

Neil Watts, a chronic fibber and joker and her best friend, was not lying.

He was dying.

He was dying and she hadn't known until now.

The two of them stood under fluorescent lights in Neil's office, Neil's hands cupping her cheeks and entwining in her thick black hair, her hands automatically around his waist as if they were trying to slow dance, coffees and cucumbers meeting as both of them looked into each other's eyes, almost searching for reactions in the odd pair that they were.

Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts.

Senior Memory Traversal Agent and Technician Specialist.

Blunt honesty and lighthearted lies.

An honest, living, breathing person.

And a liar with smiles and laughs and humor who was a dead man walking.

Her fingers curled on the lapels of his lab coat.

"No more lies." Eva's throat bobbed slightly as she swallowed, staring up into his cucumber green eyes as she searched his face. "Alright?"

Neil only hesitated for half a second before he nodded. "Okay."

He pressed his forehead to hers, their faces so close that she could feel every quiet breath that he breathed, see every flicker of his eyelashes as he blinked.

"No more lies."


	3. Vacation

"Vacation" was a word that was jokingly referred to as the 'taboo' word in Sigmund Corp. If it looked like there was a sliver of a chance that a vacation was coming, and someone mentioned the word, suddenly more work came springing up out of nowhere and there went that sliver until about three weeks later, when someone would inevitably mention the word again and the cycle would start all over again.

So when Neil told Eva that they were going on a 'trip' to 'not work', she knew he was attempting not to mention the 'taboo' word.

Didn't mean she didn't find it ridiculous.

"Where are we even going to go? I'm not a fan of the beach." You couldn't see jellyfish at the beach, but she didn't mention that to Neil.

"Well, I mean... it's not really a... v-word..."

Eva resisted the urge to roll her eyes at this 'censoring'. "It's more like... a stay-v-word. We just... stay in our house and maybe go out to places periodically?"

"By, 'our house', do you mean my apartment or your apartment?" Eva asked, organizing some papers and putting them in a large folder before putting the folder in a drawer.

"Yours. My apartment's a mess."

At least Neil was honest about that. His apartment  _was_  a mess. Eva had walked in once to find random trinkets and electronics and who knew what else strewn across the floor, and walked right back out.

She sighed. They didn't have work anyway, and generally people wanted to ask Robert and Roxie to handle the cases, not Eva and Neil, so it wasn't too bad. "Alright... I guess we're taking a-"

"No! Don't say it! It's taboo!"

"Cucumbers, Neil, seriously?!"

* * *

It was nice to not worry about the paperwork that piled up in the office, especially during the staycation (Neil had decided that since it did not include the syllables 'vay' it was safe), and just sit at home watching bad soap operas together.

Eva especially liked it when Neil started yelling at the girls to be more open on television.

But on Thursday, Neil abruptly announced that he had a surprise for Eva and told her to wear some clothes for going out, and she picked a yellow t-shirt and jeans.

Yes, she did own jeans.

Neil wore a fuzzy gray sweater and his own jeans, so she didn't feel too uncomfortable about wearing a bright yellow t-shirt to wherever they were going.

Which turned out to be an aquarium.

"Jellyfish... look at the jellyfish..."

If Eva Rosalene had been an anime character, she was certain she would've been sparkling like a pound of glitter had been dumped on her head at the sight of the jellyfish exhibit. There were  _so many different kinds_. A few different kinds didn't even have ribbon-like tentacles trailing from it and instead just wafted around, expanding and contracting through the water, glowing in the dim tank, and it was  _so_  pretty and amazing.

Neil, unlike how he usually was, was not shuffling his feet and sighing and being childish and whining that they'd just spent an hour in the jellyfish exhibit without looking at anything else, but instead looking at the jellyfish with her.

A few times, she thought she saw him looking at her, but when she turned to look, he was looking at the jellyfish in the tank and watching them swim about.

"This aquarium has the most jellyfish in the area," he said presently.

"What?"

Neil's glasses reflected the tank's light as he turned to look at her. She couldn't see his cucumber-green eyes in the blue light. "There's a couple of other aquariums nearby, but this one has the most comprehensive jellyfish exhibit. And you like jellyfish." He shrugged lightly. "I figured this one would be the most fun for you."

She almost grinned back at him. As it was, her lips curved up in a smile and she couldn't help the happiness she was feeling gushing out of her. "It  _is_. You know jellyfish do actually have tentacles?"

"Really? Are those what those stingy things are?"

"Yeah, jellyfish have cnidocytes on them, which basically release the venom..."

She couldn't help but notice the way Neil watched her as she kept explaining jellyfish's 'stingers' to him, a little smile curling at his mouth as he looked at her, the tank light reflecting off of the lenses enough that she couldn't see his eyes behind them, but she didn't stop her explanation.

It was nice seeing his lips curve up in that soft smile.

* * *

The cafe had vegetable cups.

They weren't really  _vegetable_  cups, per se, but they were made to look like cut-open vegetables. Eva got a cucumber while Neil got a squash.

"I think everything here is vegetable themed."

"Cucumbers, Neil, you didn't have to find a cafe that was  _vegetable-_ themed, I would've been fine at a normal cafe." She traced her finger along the inside of the cucumber cup, secretly a little pleased that he noticed her weird cucumber obsession.

Not that it was really an  _obsession_ , she just liked vegetables.

Neil shrugged. "Well, yeah, but what's the fun of going to a normal cafe? At least this way we get to see veggie-themed food." He sipped on his coffee with a little slurp. "I mean, look at that girl's sub, it literally looks like a cucumber."

Eva looked. The sub did, in fact, look like a cucumber that had a slice cut out of it. The texture even looked correct, at least from over here.

"... I wanna eat that."

Neil opened the menu and searched it. "Uh... it's probably the cucumber sandwich, since there's a picture next to it." He tapped the picture helpfully.

Well, it would've been helpful if she knew where in the menu he was pointing, since he was sitting facing away from her. As it was, he could've been tapping the drink menu and she wouldn't have known.

"Where? I don't see it."

Neil slid around to where she was sitting, leaning his chin on her shoulder as he flipped the pages of her menu. As if by magic, the cucumber appeared, and he tapped the picture. "Uhh, right there, Eva."

She glanced over at where his chin was resting on her shoulder, his chest pressing into her back slightly as he reached a hand out and trailed it down the menu, as if scanning the other items. He was warm and surprisingly firm against her shoulder, almost like a wall she could lean back on.

Despite the fact that he'd already pointed out the item she'd been looking for, he didn't slide back into his seat.

She pretended not to notice until the waitress returned and he casually slid back around to his side while she was ordering, leaving her shoulder feeling cooler than before.

* * *

"Neil, what the heck."

"What?! You cannot tell me that that doesn't look like cartoon you!" He gestured frantically at the constellations dotting the sky, but no matter how much Eva stared up at the velvety sky dotted with diamonds for stars, she couldn't see the alleged cartoon Eva. At best she saw a face, but not one that looked like her.

"It really doesn't, Neil."

He stuck out his tongue at her and turned back to gaze up from where he was lying in the grass, mumbling something about 'having no imagination', which she rolled her eyes at and stared at the sky again.

After the cafe, where they'd talked about the food tasting as good as it looked (Neil's pumpkin bread looked like a real pumpkin on the outside, which really did throw him for a loop), he'd gotten in the car again, letting her sidle into the seat, and driven until the stars sparkled in the sky and the buildings had blurred into trees before parking, hopping out of the car like a little kid, and then holding the door open for her like a gentleman.

Now they were on a hill looking up at stars that dotted the sky, like diamonds in velvet fabric or lighthouses in an ocean, gleaming and glittering while the breeze lightly made the grass around them whisper, and despite Neil pointing out weird 'constellations' to Eva that she could barely make out if she even  _could_  make it out, it was singlehandedly probably the most romantic thing Neil Watts had ever done.

"Hey, Neil."

He turned his head to look at her, glasses reflecting the stars slightly and making his eyes look like a green universe. Or a sparkly cucumber. "Yeah?"

"Was today a date?" Perhaps Eva could've been more delicate about how she phrased the question, but it  _was_  what she was wondering and she didn't see a point to tiptoeing around the issue. If he answered, he answered.

Sparkly cucumber eyes blinked.

Then he gave her a lopsided sort of grin. "I mean... if you want it to be, I have no objections, Eva."

That was a good question. Did she want it to be a date?

Well, if she was being honest with herself, yes. Neil Watts was her best friend, her coworker, her work partner, and most of all, he was someone that Eva had found that she couldn't separate from without taking a severe toll on her life. He was weird and wacky and was utterly incapable of being serious for long periods of time, but he was her best friend, and Eva Rosalene was not Eva without Neil Watts there.

She nodded, long hair splayed around her on the ground. "I think I would like it to be a date, Neil." She sounded oddly formal about this. Maybe because the last time she'd dated someone it had been in her second year of college and the guy hadn't even tried to hold hands with her before they broke it off.

"Okay." He took this easily, scooting closer and pecking her on the lips as if he'd been planning it the whole time, and when he began to pull away Eva's hand absently reached up and touched his chin, keeping his face in place as she deepened the kiss slightly, rolling onto her side so that she was a bit closer to him.

Neil took this well, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her a little closer, the two pressing into each other before pulling away, breath mixing with his breath smelling like overly-strong coffee and hers like a cucumber.

She sighed, a slightly happy little sound that joined the whispers of the grass around them.

"So does that mean I can make you a sign that says 'I love you for-Eva' on it?" Neil Watts asked, grinning at her like a kid on Christmas morning.

She sighed again, this time more in irritation as she flicked him on the forehead. "Neil, you squash."

* * *

At the end of the vacation, nobody at Sigmund Corp seemed surprised that Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts walked into the office building together, fingers tangled together with their palms pressed together as the two of them headed to their offices to do some paperwork that had no doubt built up from their vacation.

Nobody seemed particularly surprised when Neil leaned down to kiss Eva's cheek, either, telling her that their parting would hurt him and he would miss her dearly for the rest of the day.

Or when Eva tilted her head up, and, with her usual serious expression on her face, kissed him full on the lips. He immediately cupped the back of her hair and pulled her closer, almost tangling himself with Eva in a tight hug.

When she pulled away, her reply (from those who were in earshot) was, "Don't be so sappy, Neil; we're across the hall from each other."

Although several people did end up losing money over the bets they'd made about when Neil and Eva would get together. Robert Lin was noticed to hide a quiet grumble as he handed Roxanne Winters twenty dollars without so much as twitching his face.


	4. Night Sky

Neil Watts had always been big on sharing.

He liked sharing crayons in elementary school, or pens with his fellow classmates, or textbooks, or even a coffee or donut. Especially when he shared with Eva.

(Her reaction was always hilarious when he either took her favorite crayon color and returned it after a quick scribble, or he'd 'borrow' her pen and then pretend he'd lost it before producing it with a flourish, or he'd 'spill' something on the textbook, or when he'd just lean over and chomp on her donut.)

But he didn't like sharing his habit of going to the tallest hill, sitting on it with a thermos of too-strong coffee, and staring up at the night sky, dotted with diamonds and far-away gems.

_Or lighthouses, lighthouses that River Wyles thought were so far away that you could only see the light and Johnny had formed a bunny with, combining the moon and the stars in a awkward, stubbly pattern that had become the origami rabbits River had made, over and over, hoping he'd realize._

_He never had._

_Neil didn't know how he felt about that._

It was  _his_  tradition, sitting with his grandfather and then alone and occasionally taking a telescope and pointing it up at the sky and pointing at stars, trying to figure out the name (or, if his grandfather forgot the name, making one up himself).

He was not fond of sharing that.

But Eva was asking him where he was going early, since work didn't let out for another hour, and he was about to joke around and say he had a 'hot date' with someone, but suddenly he was looking into Eva's dark eyes and the words were snatched right out of his mouth as her hair gleamed in the light.

"... I'm going stargazing."

He fully expected her to groan and tell him he owed her for making her do the paperwork herself, or scold him and try to get him back to work, or just sigh and shake her head.

Instead, she looked at him for a minute.

"Want me to join you?"

"What? Oh..."

It was his tradition.

It was his and his grandfather's.

But Eva was looking at him, leaning on the doorframe with her lab coat's gold trim gleaming in the fluorescent lights that Sigmund Corp had, and he liked sharing with Eva, and so he gave her a smile instead of declining like he usually did.

"Sure thing, Eva. Do you need to change?"

* * *

The drive out to the hill was long. Eva drove, lab coat neatly folded in the backseat, dark blue sweater and black slacks almost melding into the dark interior of her car so that he could only see her dark eyes gleaming in the rising moon and her face framed by long, shiny black hair.

She was strangely beautiful in the silence, and Neil Watts, in his t-shirt and jeans, had an overwhelming urge to lean over the armrest and share something with her, except he didn't know how she'd take it and so he just looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

In fact, they almost missed the turn to the hill and she yelled about cucumbers and pumpkins and squash as he hastily corrected her, but they managed to not crash Eva's car and were soon parked at the base of the hill.

Neil flopped down in the grass, feeling the little blades prick his skin as he stared up at the sky, dotted with so many stars that he didn't know where to start looking.

Eva sat more carefully, shifting down into her sitting position and looking at where he was lying flat on his back and staring up at the sky. "Do you do this often, Neil?"

"Not really. Mostly just once or twice a year. Work gets too busy." He shrugged, looking at the stars and not particularly wanting to bring Sigmund Corp to tonight's outing, and pointed up into the velvety-blue night sky. "Look, it's the big pancake."

She looked befuddled at his random remark. "Big... pancake?"

"Yeah, those stars up there make a big pancake with butter on it. You know?" He pointed at the stars he was indicating.

Eva stared up for a minute.

She lay down next to him to try to see. "... point again?"

"See, that one connects there, and that there's the butter, and then there's the pancake!" Neil gestured with a little flourish at the end.

Eva squinted up at the sky. "Uh... I don't see it, Neil."

" _There!_  Next to the rabbit." He pointed again. "On the left."

She squinted. "...  _oh!_  I see it now." She turned her head and pointed at the right of the rabbit, which seemed like a good reference point. "Look, it's a pumpkin."

Neil spotted the pumpkin a lot quicker than Eva had spotted the pancake. "What do we call that? The Great Pumpkin?"

"No, then Linus would be wrong in Peanuts, since the Great Pumpkin only shows up on Halloween," Eva pointed out. "It's just 'the pumpkin'."

Neil smothered a grin. "Oh yeah. Can't invalidate Linus. Well, do you see the jellyfish?"

"The jellyfish? Where?!"

He tried to hide a grin at her sudden enthusiasm and pointed it out, Eva scanning the sky intently for the jellyfish and trying to wave off his hints as to where he saw it.

He didn't know why she'd wanted to come with him this time, or why she was getting so into looking for the patterns in the sky that he saw.

He tried to ignore the fact that Eva curled into him after several hours of stargazing, letting him wrap an arm around her like they were a couple, even though they really weren't, they were just best friends and work partners and she was serious and measured and warm and Eva Rosalene.

_He smothered the thought that maybe, just maybe, she felt the way he felt about her._

Neil Watts was not fond of sharing this tradition that had been his and his grandfather's.

But perhaps now, he could share the night sky with Eva Rosalene.

He didn't mind that so much.


	5. Something New

Neil's lips tasted like coffee.

This wasn't an inherently new fact. Neil drank coffee to the point where Eva was certain he was addicted to it; oftentimes with minimal cream or sugar and sometimes offering her his cup, which she would decline because he seemed to like it when it was cold and this resulted in her often choking on something she expected to be cold and finding it freezing or getting somewhat scalded on the occasion that it was actually hot in the thermos.

He grinned as he pulled away from her, Eva staring at him like some kind of owl, her lips tingling from the sudden contact.

Reflective glasses gleamed in the fluorescent lights, and Eva had not expected her first kiss to be in her office at work late at night, with Neil walking through the door with a thermos of coffee and sitting in a broken swivel chair that didn't quite swivel anymore, although it still rolled around fine, and listening to her and looking at her while she sorted papers and halfheartedly told him to do his report before he suddenly leaned over and put his thermos down and cupped her face in gentle hands, twisting her around with a paper still in her fingers and gently scolding words on her lips and then pressing his lips to hers.

"C'mon, Eva, you don't need to scold me so much."

She blinked at him.

"Did you just kiss me to get me to shut up?"

She couldn't believe that even Neil, her best friend, her partner-in-crime since she was small and attempting to get a book on marine biology that the librarian thought was too big for her before he came over with a book the size of two Harry Potters about tech and programming and plopped it onto the counter, her work partner who goofed off and yelled weird catchphrases during the memory simulations, would do something like that just to get her to stop telling him to slack off.

"Yeah. I wanted to ask you if you wanted to go out on a date sometime, but you kept scolding me and that made it pretty hard to ask, you know," he said, still grinning at her with that mischievous grin that sometimes resulted in her smacking him over the head with a folder halfheartedly.

Eva Rosalene, a not-dumb person by any means, Senior Memory Traversal Agent at Sigmund Corps and one of the most quickly-promoted people in Sigmund Corp, replied "Oh" very stupidly to this remark.

"So how 'bout it, Eva?" Neil's smile was tinged with a nervous energy as he leaned on her desk, regarding Eva through reflective glasses that she couldn't see his cucumber-green eyes through.

She cleared her throat, trying to gather her resolve to tell him that she didn't like going on dates with colleagues, that made things awkward when there was an inevitable split and then she had to keep working with them.

But it was Neil Watts who was asking.

"Okay."

* * *

The aquarium jellyfish seemed to be luminescent.

Neil didn't seem annoyed that Eva was gazing at the jellyfish for longer than people would consider normal, wafting through the water like beautiful squishy birds in the tank. The two of them had come to the aquarium as the first date, although Neil had told Eva that this one had the biggest jellyfish exhibit.

She jumped on  _that_  wagon pretty quickly, and he wasn't lying about the jellyfish exhibit being rather expansive, because the two of them were able to wander around in there for a few hours without even glancing at the other exhibits.

"Hey, Eva."

She turned to him, looking at him in the blue lights that made the jellyfish glow like stars in the sky. His green eyes were almost like the ocean in the light, glasses for once not reflecting the light so that she couldn't even see his eyes, staring at Eva as if transfixed, like how she was with the jellyfish.

He cleared his throat. Then cleared it again, as if his words were caught in his throat.

Then leaned forward, eyes slipping shut behind his glasses and kissed her.

It was not as long as their first one, nor even in remotely similar settings, with instead a tank of glowing jellyfish in the darkened section of the aquarium floating to their left and almost no one in this section because they were looking at the shark or dolphin show that was going on on the other side of the aquarium, but it made something warm bubble in Eva's stomach anyway.

Neil Watts was not gentle.

Not by any means; he would practically scream video game jokes and references at the top of his lungs while trying to move on in the memory and he'd go sprinting through the halls in Sigmund Corps and even as a child he would pounce on her while playing in the backyard or on the playground and knock her into mulch.

But now his hands weren't anywhere near her face and his lips were still fixed on hers, except loosely enough that if she'd tilted her head back she would've tugged away, and it never occurred to her to do that- simply tilt her face up so that she could return the kiss more easily.

He still tasted like coffee, but the kiss was light and gentle instead of firm and long, and he pulled away after a minute, hands shoved into the pockets of his lab coat as he regarded her fondly.

That was rather new, honestly.

* * *

The stars were brighter than usual tonight.

Neil and Eva lay on a hill, the two of them curling into each other in a hug, his arms wrapped around Eva and cushioning her head from frosty grass, while her gloved fingers traced little patterns down his spine.

His lab coat was laid over the both of them to avoid the slightly biting winter breeze in some makeshift blanket, their coats and scarves and gloves (well, mittens for Neil) doing nothing to stop the blush in their cheeks.

It was hard for her to tell if the winter was causing the blush, or just the way they were cuddling together.

He usually didn't like getting close.

Sure, there was that time when he'd tried to hold her hand, when Johnny and River were in the spacecraft and it was taking off, but it was awkward and she'd pushed him away that time because she wasn't sure what he was doing or how she felt about it.

But now he was practically right up against her, entangled with her as their breath mixed together in snowy air, occasionally rolling away to point at a constellation that he spotted in his peripheral vision that was just  _so_  weird or cool or interesting.

He'd point out the weird ones and she'd respond with her usual blunt commentary out of total habit. One was apparently a pancake ("Neil, that's literally just a shapeless blob"), one was a swarm of bees ("Each individual star being a bee isn't really a constellation, Neil"), and Neil also pointed out one that looked like Eva.

(Honestly that one just looked like he pointed out random stars and thought she wouldn't notice if they didn't end up as a constellation.)

And the entire time, his arm remained around her, even when he rolled away to point out a constellation in the sky that she couldn't quite spot.

Neil Watts was not sentimental. He was not cuddly. And he was not by any means warm and clinging to Eva like she was one of the last things he'd ever have in his grip.

So this, too, was new for Eva Rosalene.

* * *

Their kisses were no longer new for Eva.

She was used to Neil pressing a kiss randomly to her cheek or her forehead or her lips at work, just walking in, planting one, waiting for her to peck him back, and then strolling out of her office like nothing had just happened, or Neil walking into her apartment with his spare key while she was making something for dinner and wrapping her from behind in a hug and kissing her cheek or her lips if she turned her head while he did so.

Neil was surprisingly affectionate, even though in public he still complained about lovey-dovey couples and pretended they weren't like that despite Robert Lin clearly not believing him and Roxie going along with it good-heartedly.

_He was a good liar about that._

So when he came busting into her office with his laptop and set it down in front of her, a new game flashing on the screen, she couldn't help but shake her head with a tired smile. Probably one of his elaborate ruses to get her to let him sit in her chair and kiss her while she worked.

The game title simply read 'For Eva' in flashing letters. She pressed to start and started leading her little character through the halls.

Some of the path looked very silly- for example, the path went up and then right back down in some places, or she had to teleport to a small room and then back. Furthermore, there weren't many mobs or enemies. She was pretty much able to click through with no problem.

There was the occasional jellyfish, star, or rose dotting the area, but those just gave her an extra heart or opened a door for her to continue. Eventually she hit what looked like the end of the maze and her character jumped onto a little square.

The screen zoomed out from her little maze, slowly to the point of being boring. She almost turned away to ask Neil if the game was bugging out, but she'd gotten used to him whining when the game didn't work the way he wanted it to and snatching his laptop away from her, pecking at the keyboard frenetically, and he wasn't doing that, so she just watched patiently.

Finally, it finished zooming out, and the path that Eva had taken glowed as the tiles comprising the walls faded into darkness.

_WILL YOU MARRY ME?_

Eva blinked twice.

Then turned to Neil, fully intending on asking what the  _heck_  this joke was about.

Only to find him on one knee, grinning at her like he was still a little kid except it was tinged with this nervous energy that she usually didn't see in him, holding up a tiny little box with a small ring in it, glasses off so that she could see his for-once, absolutely sincere green eyes.

Eva had become used to Neil Watts becoming her other half, like two puzzle pieces fitting together.

But this was _definitely_  something new for her.


	6. Pain

Memory traversal through Neil's memories was strange, because she remembered a large majority of the memories from a different perspective- her own.

And she didn't remember the way the world flashed red, as if pain ripped through every seam of Neil's body to the point where the whole memory was tainted with the pain.

But she remembered Neil Watts trying to hold her hand in the sunset as the space shuttle lifted off in Johnny's altered memory.

She remembered feeling conflicted- feeling as though feelings were pounding their way through her chest and beating on her chest from the inside out, feelings that she was almost certain she didn't have.

So she pushed his hand away, trying not to take her eyes from the rocket or feel the blush, heating her face the slightest amount and threatening to spill through onto her face, but he was not looking, still looking at the rocket with those reflective lenses, and so she looked and looked forward and he looked forward and neither of them really looked at the other's face.

But she did see the moment of pain that flickered over his face at that. As if the small, dismissive action she'd done wounded him.

But she had not been looking at him, she had not been looking, and so she had not seen it.

She remembered the first day of work at Sigmund Corps.

Neil had been practically bubbling over with excitement, telling her that he was glad she was there with a smile that was genuine and warm and sincere and a little surprising, because Neil Watts was not warm or sincere, he was goofy and exasperating and dramatic, and Eva would not have traded him for the world.

They were shown the offices, the cubicles, the areas where faulty equipment was tinkered with.

She remembered Neil excusing himself to go to the bathroom.

She did not remember Neil barricading himself in a stall and almost collapsing on a toilet, the world flashing red with pain, red, red red to the point where it was almost blinding, but he stuffed a painkiller or two or three or fifteen in his mouth and the world slowed, swirled, then steadied, Neil draped over the toilet and trying to breathe.

She had not been there.

She had not been there for her best friend, and so she had not remembered his pain.

She remembered the way he'd been more subdued afterward.

" _What took you so long, Neil?_ "

" _I had to do a hadouken._ "

" _What's a hadou- never mind._ "

She remembered being concerned about bubbling, jumpy excitement turning to an almost professional, slightly more solemn demeanor.

But she also remembered deciding that it was nothing.

She remembered prom.

She recalled watching him open the car door for her in his tuxedo t-shirt and black slacks and loafers and sweeping a bow so low that she wouldn't have been surprised that he conked his head on the floor, offering a seat to the lovely Eva Rosalene.

Eva had smacked him on the back of the head. "Don't be so silly, Neil. It's not like it's a real date."

He'd blinked, then grinned, teasing a hand through her long, glossy hair and making her exclaim in protest, swatting him off. "Knock it off, I curled my hair!"

"Who said it was a date, dummy?" he'd teased, before hastily scooting into the driver's seat and taking her, car smelling of fresh pizza and some spilled soda.

What Eva didn't remember was seeing Neil sit in his room

She didn't remember the flash of pain that made him drop his pen, almost collapse onto his desk in pain, gripping it tightly before he was able to fumble pills into his mouth, shove them in and make the red fade away, barely tinging the edges of Eva's vision and the world that Neil Watts was in.

She didn't remember Neil staring down at a paper- a paper that, when she looked at it, found was scrawled with some kind of rambling confession- to her, to her, she had not expected it to be to her and she would never have guessed it was for her unless she had looked at her own name- pen abandoned on the desk.

She didn't remember him abruptly seizing the paper and cramming it into a crumpled ball, throwing it across the room into the trash can with a mumble of "stupid Neil, not like it matters, she's way out of your league" and going off to change into his tuxedo t-shirt and pants and shoes.

She didn't remember, because he had never told her, and she had never seen it.

You cannot remember something you've never seen.

She remembered the job exploration fair at their high school, Eva lingering by the marine biologist booth and checking out pamphlets. Neil was only a few booths away, looking at Sigmund Corp's neatly set-up booth, talking to the technician specialist and the memory traversal agent.

She remembered hearing him yell to Eva from his booth that he'd be "working with the coolest technology in the world!"

She'd rolled her eyes, slightly exasperated by his antics and his weirdness and his bizarre behavior of him trying to stick close to his best friend.

She did not recall the flash that was here, throbbing red and eclipsing the world, Neil flinching and doubling over and gripping a table near the back that was unattended, breathing raggedly through his nose with clenched eyes and teeth and unsteady, shallow breaths, the Sigmund Corp employee exclaiming over his health.

She had had her back turned to him.

She'd been looking at a different booth, checking up on some things there.

And in the few moments that she didn't have Neil Watts in her peripheral vision, he'd crumpled like an old piece of paper, thrown away and discarded and stomped on, before straightening up again, running his hands over his clothes to smooth it out, and then striding over to drag Eva over to look at the Sigmund Corp booth, despite her complaints of not even caring about that sort of thing, blissfully unaware of the blinding pain that had just shot through his body.

She did not see it, and so she did not remember it.

The only thing she remembered was that she'd begun to change her mind, because she cared about Neil Watts. She cared about her best friend, and she didn't know how he would handle working at Sigmund Corp all by himself.

She remembered the middle school science field trip, almost running through the halls to look at all the fish and jellyfish, glowing and gleaming in the tanks.

Neil had run after her, laughing the whole way and reminding her that "Eva! You have to stick with your buddy!" and chasing after her.

She did not remember the way he watched her, with green eyes that sparkled and almost glowed as he watched her glowing with joy, looking at the fish (especially the jellyfish) gleaming in the tank like precious jewels buried in dirt.

She did not remember him looking at her like she composed his entire world.

She did not remember this, because she had not noticed it.

Then there was Eva Rosalene sitting at Neil's tenth birthday party, the two of them the only people there.

She remembered his face scrunching like he would cry, but keeping it bravely in. She remembered getting up and pushing her gift at him, stubbornly, because the two had been enemies since they were in first grade and he'd insulted her favorite vegetable, except it had been such a one-sided enmity because she remembered he had wanted to be friends.

She remembered every kind offer to come play with him.

She remembered every way he'd tried to get her to join in with games on the playground.

She remembered him defending her from bullies.

She even remembered (for some reason) the way he had once eaten craft glue in some weird eight-year-old attempt to impress her. Of course, it hadn't impressed her, and he'd ended up going to the nurse, but he had tried, and it was still funny to her in retrospect. She tried not to grin whenever she brought it up in front of Neil.

She remembered Neil Watts' face lighting up at the sight of the mini-telescope she had gotten him, because she had noticed the boy with neat hair and overly big glasses eclipsing half of his face despite herself babbling about stars and constellations and going with Grandpa but wanting to see more, and she had wanted to be nice.

She remembered that that was the day they had started to be friends.

She did not remember the way that he'd looked at her when she'd given it to him, like she herself was a star and he wanted to do nothing more than gaze at her like one.

She did not recall it, because she had not been looking at him when she had, but instead at her feet.

Then there was Eva Rosalene on the first day of first grade, at six years old, eating a cucumber sandwich by herself, with her hair up in pigtails and little jellyfish hair ties keeping them up.

And then there was little Neil Watts, who came flouncing across the playground with his tin dented lunchbox and neat brown hair and glasses that looked like they were far too big for his face, and flopped down, pulling out what had to be the most utterly, disgustingly sugary concoction Eva had seen then or since.

"Hi!"

Little Eva blinked back. "Hi."

He was already biting into his sugary object. Sugar ended up all over his knees. "Whatcha eating?"

"A cucumber sandwich."

He made a face at that. "Ewwww. That sounds gross."

"It is not!"

"Ewwww, you're eating something gross," he teased, sticking his tongue out at her. It was powdered with sugar, and he already had most of the sugar on his face and down his front rather than in his mouth or stomach.

Little Eva glared and held up a book about fish she was reading. "Go away before I hit you with this!" she shouted at him, putting all of her six-year-old indignation into the movement.

She remembered Neil running away to the other side of the playground, joining up with a few boys and talking to them about her. She remembered how she'd thought he was probably tattling and insulting her, and feeling her pride puff up with anger. How dare this weird boy with his super-sugary snack try to get her in trouble.

She did not remember Neil almost gushing about her.

"She's awesome!" Neil told the other little boy that she did not remember. Maybe his name was Harold or something. She honest-to-God didn't know.

"I'm going to marry her when we grow up!"

She hadn't remembered that either.

She remembered so much about him, and yet there was so much she did not remember.

She did not remember the way he struggled with words, the man who she'd fallen in love with for silly phrases and dramatic overacting and ridiculous behavior, the way he tried to find a way to say three words that could have changed Eva's life.

She did not remember red flickers of pain, that tore through his body like it was paper and caused him to fall and crumple, and she did not remember it because he had hidden it from her so that she never saw it.

( _She had seen the painkillers, but she had not really questioned his reasons about it._ )

She did not remember that his memories revolved around Eva, spinning and swirling and orbiting around the fact that he wouldn't leave her, that he liked spending time with her.

She did not remember him ever telling her that he liked her, not without teasing and poking that made her swat at him and scowl.

She did not remember it at all.

She lost her breath at his wish, realizing what he wanted to change from when she'd run into the hospital room in his memory traversal, and he had nodded grimly, and then uttered a sentence that had confused her.

" _Figure it out, Eva. You're the brilliant Dr. Rosalene! The trick is to look for the motif!_ "

The reason the sentence confused her was the fact that despite the fact he had a huge smile on his face, green eyes gleaming in the fluorescent lights of the hospital, despite the fact that he spoke joking, silly words, despite the fact that he gave her hand a squeeze, he had tears in his eyes.

But now it didn't confuse her.

Because the motif was her.

Everything that Neil was remembering, pertaining to his wish, involved Eva Rosalene.

And that wish was to tell Eva Rosalene that he was in love with her.

There was one thing Eva changed. Only one thing.

She changed nothing else.

The letter Neil wrote did not go in the trash.

The letter with his confession, instead of being a rambly mess that he crumpled into a ball and threw into the garbage can to be thrown away, was instead a simple, neatly written confession that Neil looked at, confusion in his eyes- before he decided he must've simply forgotten what he'd written late at night the night before and put it into his suit pocket before running out to get to the car.

He told her on the night of prom. He gave her the letter, she read it, and she'd stared at him, face turning bright red.

He regarded her with this weird, nervous smile on his face, and it was only weird because Neil Watts was not a nervous person.

"Is it still not a real date?"

There was more staring.

Then a huff.

"Cucumbers, Neil, of course it's a real date now. I'm good with giving it a go if you are." Despite the casual words, Eva could see excitement dancing in her high school self's eyes, bright and happy and joyful.

Because she felt the same way.

She knew she had.

But she had never acted on it either.

They'd gotten married, so Little Neil had been correct about that.

She'd worn a long white dress and he'd danced with her, holding Eva carefully like she was the last thing he'd ever have that was this precious to him. They got married in an aquarium (of all places) and had the reception in a conservatory, and everything was a blur except watching herself and Neil Watts dance with joyful smiles that made her heart, her breaking, hurting heart, feel full.

Eva Rosalene did not know what pain Neil had gone through.

How could she?

She wasn't her best friend.

But she couldn't help but wonder if the way her heart broke as the heart monitor he was hooked up to flatlined was anything similar to what he had felt.

Neil Watts died thinking that he had told her that he'd loved her.

Eva Rosalene had to live the rest of her life knowing that she hadn't told him.

If the pain she felt at that was anything like the pain Neil felt, red tearing through his vision and sending him staggering and straightening and swallowing a pill, a small white pill that was all too easy to get addicted to...

Well.

Perhaps she deserved it.

Because she had never told her best friend that she was in love with him.

And now her broken heart paid the price.


	7. Free for All

"You know, I'm not free."

Eva blinked, lifting her eyes from where she was cuddling against his chest on her couch. The television had some weird nature documentary on. She'd stopped paying attention after the jellyfish segment.

Well, she'd paid some attention during the ones with fish in them, but otherwise she'd been laying her head on Neil's chest and letting him keep an arm around her.

"What?"

He adjusted his glasses, which glinted in the dim light of the television, and looked down at her down his nose from where he was lying on the couch. His arm was draped around Eva, t-shirt with a pizza logo emblazoned across it, and his lab coat had been (to Eva's earlier slight displeasure) tossed over the back of the couch. His shorts were striped.

Despite Neil Watts being one of the most insensitive, unromantic, unsentimental people Eva had ever met, he sure was a cuddler.

"I'm not free," Neil said again, leaning back on the couch and letting Eva lean into him slightly, resting her head on his shoulder and feeling his heart flutter in his chest. "Can't just mooch off of me, Dr Rosalene."

She sighed. Neil liked to joke around a lot, especially about how much he was worth and how much he, therefore, cost. Sometimes it was at the weirdest times.

Like now, when she was wearing a plain blue shirt and some black sports shorts that Traci had sent her for Christmas once as a joke and wrapped in his arms, dozing off to the sound of some bizarre nature documentary in the background.

"I know." Eva lifted dark eyes to glance up at him, arms crossed as she looked at him. "I know you're not free for everyone."

As he had told her about fifteen thousand times.

He gave her a mischievous grin, lips curling up as his eyes gleamed. "Okay. So pay me the price."

She sighed and pressed a kiss to his cheek, lips a little wet from having had some cucumber water a few minutes earlier, before pulling away from him.

"Nope! Not quite. You did pay off at least half of it, though," Neil's voice sounded from where her lips were still situated, not even an inch away from his face.

Damn him for sounding so happy about this.

She sighed, dropping her head to his collarbone. His warmth seeped into her, arms still wrapped securely around Eva.

* * *

She remembered the day she'd decided to ask him out.

Sure, there was the chance he'd have hated her forever after that and all (actually, she'd thought that would be the likely scenario), but still, if she didn't ask, she didn't know when she'd get the chance.

Neil was strange about wasting time. If he didn't think you were worth his time, he simply would ignore you.

Sure, he wasted a lot of time doing lots of little weird things, but those were things that interested him and (for some reason) he considered those worth his time, and it was harder for him to decide about  _people_.

And if you  _were_  worth his time, you had to consistently prove it, or 'pay' him for it.

She'd known this since she was a little girl, meeting up with him on the playground to talk about fish and jellyfish and stars and constellations under the most secret part of playground (which really wasn't much of a secret, now that she thought about it).

But when she'd walked into his office and casually mentioned that she'd been thinking about asking him out on a date to the cafe, he had instantly set down his coffee and looked up at her, taking off reflective lenses that gleamed in the lights of the office to reveal green eyes.

"I dunno... if you're gonna rent me, you need to pay upfront." He leaned on his elbows, regarding Eva Rosalene with his glasses dangling from his fingers. To be honest, she was pretty sure he was now just looking at her blurry form, but he was still staring seriously up at Eva.

She blinked a few times.

"What?"

"C'mon. Pay upfront. If you wanna rent me for the afternoon, you gotta have the payment ready." Neil regarded her, tapping the arm of his glasses against his lip as he stared enigmatically back up at her.

She stared back, blankly.

The cafe usually cost about twenty bucks for drinks... and maybe an extra ten for food. Maybe he wanted her to pay?

Well, that made sense. Neil tended to mooch off of her for whatever. Once he'd even tried to get her to buy a pack of gum for him. (She had refused.)

She took out her wallet, rummaged around, and held out thirty dollars. "Here you are."

Neil stared back, not taking the money. She just stood there with the money extended and looked at him and he looked back and the two of them just stared at each other for a few seconds.

After another moment, Neil sighed and stood, sliding his glasses back onto his face with an exasperated sound. "Oh, for Pete's sake-"

He walked around his desk, wrapped an arm to pull her in, and kissed her.

Eva made a sound, her lips pressed against his. He smelled like coffee (as always) and one of his hands supported her back. Heck, if he'd wanted to Neil could've dipped her like they were in some kind of cheesy romance movie, but he didn't and he just stood there with his arms wrapped around her and his face so close to hers that she could see through his reflective lenses enough to see that he'd closed his eyes.

She'd barely closed hers, trying not to melt slightly at the sensation, when he tugged away again.

"There. Now we can go." Neil smiled at her, adjusting his glasses and pulling back so that she could look at him, arms still wrapped around her waist. Her hands were curled into little fists on his chest, the thirty dollars still crumpled in a little wad of paper in her fist, and she had to lift her head from his collarbone to look up into his green eyes.

Despite her heart soaring (despite her trying to tell it to stop), she couldn't help but form words in her mouth and let them drop out, still staring up into his eyes, coffee and cucumbers meeting as they stared at one another.

"You suck at flirting."

Neil pouted slightly, poking her in the forehead and making her swat at him with a halfhearted mutter. "Aw, Eva..."

* * *

Eva glanced up at Neil, who was still regarding Eva with an expectant grin.

"You're picky about the type of payment I give you," she replied, shifting around so that his breath, smelling of coffee that had sugar and cream mixed in, gusted across her lips.

Her arms looped around his shoulders, and if anyone else had done the action to anyone else, they would've thought Eva was flirting.

She wasn't.

She just liked being close to Neil.

"What can I say? I've got my standards," came Neil's reply, and she watched his lips curve into a smile even as they moved, words and breath gently meeting her as she leaned a little closer to him, his arms supporting her like some kind of warm, gentle scaffolding.

"Fine, then, I'll pay."

Her lips met his, her fingers coming up to cup the back of his head and lean herself into the kiss. Neil reciprocated eagerly, one hand coming up to touch her cheek and keep her supported despite her essentially lying on top of him, his arm curling around her waist and keeping her flush up against him.

A little warm flutter flitted through Eva's heart, tickling her chest and making a tiny smile curl at her lips through the kiss.

"And that's your daily rent paid for today," Neil told her, after pulling away and giving her a broad grin.

Eva swatted him gently, unable to help the slightly silly little smile on her face. "Hey, that good of a kiss? Deserves at least a week's rent on that," she replied.

"Mmnn, maybe another round of payment'll convince me."

His hand reached up and brought her face back to his.

Neil Watts was not free for all. He had a price for him giving anyone any time at all.

( _Maybe it was because he himself didn't have much time._ )

But for Eva Rosalene, the price was not high at all.


End file.
